UN·DER·CLASS
('&n-d&r-"klas) n. Date: 1918 : The lowest social stratum usually made
up of disadvantaged minority groups. (Merriam-Webster
Online)

The underclasses
were also known as the "dangerous classes" of Paris. These were
made up of workmen, the extremely impoverished and criminals.

"Destitution
in Paris during the first half of the nineteenth century provides a monstrous
experience of the physical and moral destitution secreted by great cities
in every age . . . The advantage of taking crime as our theme is that
it sums up the problem of the course of working-class life in an extreme
form and reduces it to its simplest and most striking expression"
(Chevalier 269).

The underclasses
were indistinguishable to the bourgeoisie. Their view incorporated the
whole of the classes into one "dangerous class." Thus, all members
of the lower classes became a criminal in the eyes of he bourgeoisie.
Crime was "an abiding cause of fear, a fear which reached heights
of terror in certain winters of cold and destitution" (Chevalier
3).

"'Criminal' is
the key word for the Paris of the first half of the nineteenth century;
first of all, because of the increase in the numbers of crimes committed,
as recorded in the crime statistics, but brought out even more strikingly
in other documents such as the economic and demographic statistics . .
. 'Criminal,' secondly because of the imprint of crime upon the whole
urban landscape. No part of the contemporary Paris was unshadowed by crime"
(Chevalier 2).

One of the best sources
for information about these "dangerous classes" can be found from
the "qualitative documentation," as Chevalier calls it, from such
authors as Victor Hugo, Eugene
Sue and Honore de Balzac.

"Every human
society has what is called in the theatres a third substage. The
social soil is mined everywhere, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil.
These works are in strata; there are upper mines and lower mines. There
a top and a bottom in this dark sub-soil which sometimes sinks beneath
civilisation, and which our indifference and our carelessness trample
underfoot" (Hugo 621).

"A returned convict,
who, in this foul phraseology, is called an 'ogre,' or a woman in the
same degraded state, who is termed an 'ogress,' generally keep such 'cribs,'
frequented by the refuse of the Parisian population; freed felons, thieves,
and assassins are there familiar guests" (Sue
11).